Klippenstein. He's counting on you not looking up the elements of a FARA violation charge. You can't accidentally violate FARA simply by opposing AI; you have to literally be an agent of (that is, under the direction of) China, and a felony violation has to be willful.
The DOJ announcement is surely in supremely bad faith, as is everything else in Trump's DOJ. But this kind of breathless response is exactly what they're hoping for by publishing this stuff.
You're right that there is supposed to be a legal bar for being "directed by" a foreign government, but would you want to gamble on the jury pool setting the bar that high?
Look at the hacker news comment section any time China comes up, and then consider that the average American is considerably less sophisticated.
Yeah, if I'd had no knowing contact with elements of the government of China, I'd take that bet every day of the week and twice on Sundays. I don't even think it'd get to a jury.
Ok, that covers you, but there are 100M party members, any Chinese-descended or Chinese-married person in the US probably has a connection to a party member.
"Have you, now or in the past, had contact with a member of Chinese Communist Party?" sounds really scary compared to "Is your uncle a mid-tier director at Huawei?" even though they're describing the same fact.
If you want to formulate a bank-shot argument about how this preys on people of Chinese ancestry, I'm fine with that. All I'm here to say is that you can't plausibly be charged with a FARA violation simply for arguing or protesting for a policy position that China happens to want you to take; the DOJ bears the burden of proving that you knew you were coordinating with China, directly, and, if it's a felony, willfully (that, is, voluntarily, deliberately, with a purpose to break the law).
Read Klippenstein's piece again. Does he want you to know this?
The fact is that I don't have a stake in analyses about whether the administration is operating in good faith. I'm an opponent of the administration. I'm already sold on that point.
My problem is with the Ken Klippensteins who are engagement farming with posts that misinform people about how the law works.
If you're already winding up with a reply about how the law doesn't matter anymore, ask yourself "why are we talking about this then?" If it doesn't matter, they don't need to announce anything, and their announcement has no content.
As it stands: the announcement really doesn't have any content anyways; they generate this stuff specifically to rile people like you up, and Klippenstein feeds off that energy like a remora.
Unfortunately for you I don't happen to like Ken Klippenstein, he is not a regular part of my information diet, at all, and I regularly criticize him on other sites under my handle linked to my name. and *you* are *relying* on analysis that assumes that the administration is "operating in good faith" in your post that the person above me replied to. That was the point of the "conversation". Whatever weird projective logic trap you're trying to do, predicting my reply, bad news stranger, I think the law and its enforcement is in a very strange and differentiated state across the country and across federal, state, and municipal boundaries. The California ballot seizure case against Sheriff Bianco is a perfect example.
tptacek · · focus · HN ↗
The DOJ announcement is surely in supremely bad faith, as is everything else in Trump's DOJ. But this kind of breathless response is exactly what they're hoping for by publishing this stuff.
nixon_why69 · · focus · HN ↗
Look at the hacker news comment section any time China comes up, and then consider that the average American is considerably less sophisticated.
tptacek · · focus · HN ↗
nixon_why69 · · focus · HN ↗
"Have you, now or in the past, had contact with a member of Chinese Communist Party?" sounds really scary compared to "Is your uncle a mid-tier director at Huawei?" even though they're describing the same fact.
tptacek · · focus · HN ↗
Read Klippenstein's piece again. Does he want you to know this?
nixon_why69 · · focus · HN ↗
I'm afraid that a paranoid, worst-case, bad faith assumption isn't something we can handwave away anymore.
dtornabene · · focus · HN ↗
tptacek · · focus · HN ↗
The fact is that I don't have a stake in analyses about whether the administration is operating in good faith. I'm an opponent of the administration. I'm already sold on that point.
My problem is with the Ken Klippensteins who are engagement farming with posts that misinform people about how the law works.
If you're already winding up with a reply about how the law doesn't matter anymore, ask yourself "why are we talking about this then?" If it doesn't matter, they don't need to announce anything, and their announcement has no content.
As it stands: the announcement really doesn't have any content anyways; they generate this stuff specifically to rile people like you up, and Klippenstein feeds off that energy like a remora.
dtornabene · · focus · HN ↗
tptacek · · focus · HN ↗
dtornabene · · focus · HN ↗